Find Your Fears and Overcome

Every once in a while I feel I need a swift kick from the behind when it comes to both my personal and professional life. It’s usually when I feel overwhelmed, anxious or a little stressed about something. Then my thought process is, I need some motivation to get my act together, that it’s not that bad, I am just not as organized at the moment as I thought I was. When I feel this way, I go listen to a Grant Cardone book. Usually, “The 10X Rule”, and it straightens me right up.

Every time I listen to the book I get more out of it, and each time I tell myself I am going to get the hard copy or listen to the book in my home office, in front of my computer, so I can take notes along the way and actually do the exercises at the end of each chapter. Now, while I am driving, if I can, I will pause at the end of each chapter and respond to the exercise questions in my head or speak them out loud, then I continue to the next chapter.

Well, this time around, among the many other things that really spoke to me in the book, there was one topic that stood out. The topic of pushing through your fear. Now, I am not going to quote his book or necessary paraphrase it either. I want to emphasize a couple of the points.

As I am writing this I am only several days away from a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu competition. In fact, this will be my first one as a blue belt. I am very excited, and as I was registering for the event I had a sense of fear hit me. It was more a fear of wondering if I was really ready for this, and I started to ask myself if I really was. Now, I am pretty good about overcoming these sorts of feelings, and when I got back on the mats to train, this same sort of fear would drive me to do my best, to push through the tough days, and really take note of my good ones.

Grant Cardone says in his book, as soon as you sense fear, that’s the time to act, to push through the fear. Whether I am training for a competition or anything else in life, this is something I have had to really push myself to do! For as long as I can remember in my life, I hesitated about most everything I did. When I started training Jiu Jitsu, this hesitation surfaced like a bad boil and I had to overcome this! I am almost two and a half years into training and though I am much better about it, I still relapse and find myself having to deal with my life habit of hesitation.

My hesitation is born from a sense of fear of the unknown. As I got older and was developing a career I realized I was falling into a career of selling, which is probably the one place where hesitation should never reside. Hesitation in sales keeps you from making phone calls, from saying the right thing during a sales pitch, acting fast enough to get the deal, and general in the work place, being able to talk to your boss openly.

Jiu Jitsu has really helped me see this hesitation in my life. It has also helped me see my own strength, it has built up my self-confidence as an individual and physically, which are all good things and given me a real road map to continue to work through this sort of fear.

As part of dealing with fears, you have to seek them out. Find your fears and overcome them. Many times we run away from our fears so much that we start doing it without thinking. You have to stop yourself from running away, face those fears and take action.

Grant Cardone also said you have to take action with speed and power. You can’t just face your fear and sissy throw into it. You have to swing at it like your life depends on it. That is the only way you will overcome and grow. As soon as your fear or hesitation starts to show it’s ugly head, attack first and take it down.

I just recently started a new job where I have the pleasure and challenge of helping create an exciting new role in the company. It’s still sales, but it’s essentially outside sales. Without going into the details, I will tell you this. Going into this position, I had absolute confidence in myself that I could pull this off, and I still do! But there are moments in the day, or at night when I wonder if I can really do it. This doubt is that hesitation and fear rearing its ugly head. I then shake my own head, tell myself that of course, I can succeed, and totally exceed expectations. I get myself excited again. I remind myself why this is such an amazing opportunity and I get pumped up again. Then I listen to some Grant Cardone and all is well.

Sure, I shared some personal insight here, and I hope that the reality of it speaks to someone, but if not, just take away this one thing. What you are afraid of doing, someone has already done before you. So, get out there, don’t let your fear and hesitation cripple you and stop you from succeeding in whatever you choose to tackle, whether it’s work, projects, family, friends, or hitting the mats for some seriously intense Jiu Jitsu training. Seek out your fear, and show it who’s boss.